"That being the case, how could I have fired hundreds (maybe thousands) of rounds through handguns over the years, and never killed anyone (which I have, and haven't, respectively)?"

Hopefully because you weren't pointing them at anyone.

Look, I'm not against sporting handguns or guns for hunting but the fact is a Magnum 45 or whatever is not made for sporting reasons - it is a device to kill someone as efficiently as possible. You might fire them down the range, but the reason they are made is to kill people, and in the US there are thousands (tens of?) these weapons in the hands of criminals, nutters and misguided souls, where they shouldn't be because the market is uncontrolled and because the unique culture of violence exists in this particular country - a love affair with deadly weapons that is written into the very constitution.

This has lead to comments like this:
"All the righteous citizens have surrendered their means of defense and huddle behind closed doors in those parts of the town. Well, I guess in that way it's not too different than any large city in the US"

Here's the news: You're fucked until you stop looking at life down the sights of a gun. If Slag is right, and the unarmed citizens of your urban hinterlands are too shit scared to go out of their front doors at night then the American dream has failed. It can't provide it's citizens with security, it glorifies brutal violence and has a culture so steeped in the macho posturing of a large proportion of it's male population you have to wonder if someone is adding testosterone to the donuts.

Slag's comment betrays this alpha-male attitude by suggesting that if you don't have a gun you are weaker for it, as you don't have a 'means of defence'. The very idea a person has to carry a gun in order to be able to go about the business of living their lives is about a damning an indictment of the state of a society as it's possible to get.